Can a non-physician own a med spa in Ohio?
Ownership · part of The Practice Perimeter
Short answer
Generally yes: Ohio lets physicians work through or for a corporation or other business entity, and the State Medical Board says the corporate-practice doctrine no longer exists in Ohio.
Ohio answers the ownership question the other way round from most of this corpus. The statute expressly authorizes a physician to practice through a corporation, an LLC, a partnership or a professional association — and then says that list is not exhaustive.
Drawn from 9 verified rules in this section · regulatory monitoring, not legal advice
- Ohio Rev. Code § 4731.22(B)(17) · Sep 2, 2026
- Ohio Rev. Code § 4731.31(A)(1), (B) · Sep 2, 2026
- Ohio Rev. Code §4731.226(A)(1) · Aug 17, 2026
- Ohio Rev. Code §4731.226(A)(1) · Aug 17, 2026
- Statement of the State Medical Board of Ohio on the Corporate Practice of Medicine, approved 2012-03-15 · Aug 18, 2026
- Ohio Rev. Code §1701.03 · Aug 18, 2026
- Ohio Rev. Code §1785.03 · Aug 18, 2026
- Ohio Rev. Code §4729.552(B)(1) · Aug 18, 2026
- Ohio Rev. Code §4731.22(B)(6) · Aug 17, 2026
Related Ohio rules
⚠️ Ohio makes the division of fees for referral a disciplinary ground, and reaches beyond money. It is grounds for discipline to engage in “the division of fees for referral of patients, or the receiving of a thing of value in return for a specific referral of a patient to utilize a particular service or business”. “a thing of value” and “a particular service or business” together catch reciprocal arrangements that never involve a fee at all.
Ohio Rev. Code § 4731.22(B)(17) · verified Sep 2, 2026
⚠️ and its one named exception helps nobody in this market. The ground applies “except as authorized in section 4731.31” — which permits “a rural hospital or a health care facility that is owned or operated by a rural hospital” to employ a physician, a rural hospital being one in a county “that has a population of less than one hundred twenty-five thousand”. A cosmetic practice is not inside that door.
Ohio Rev. Code § 4731.31(A)(1), (B) · verified Sep 2, 2026
How other states answer this
- Alabama
- Alaska
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- California
- Colorado
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- District of Columbia
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Maine
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Montana
- Nebraska
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New Mexico
- New York
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
- South Dakota
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Vermont
- Virginia
- Washington
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin
- Wyoming
Related Ohio questions
- What limits does Ohio place on a med spa's business structure?
- In Ohio, may a non-clinical owner or manager be paid a share of revenue?
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← All Ohio rules and changes · MedSpaRadar is regulatory monitoring and reference: it summarizes public laws, regulations and agency actions and links each to its source. It is not legal, medical, or compliance advice, and using it creates no attorney-client relationship. A summary can lag its source or leave out detail, and monitoring itself can be interrupted — so an absence of alerts means nothing reached you, not that nothing happened. Read the cited source, check its effective date, and confirm any change to your operations or clinical practice with qualified health-law counsel and your medical director. Legislative data via LegiScan (CC BY 4.0).